So this week completes somewhat my dive into processing, at least for a a little while. We salvaged working copies of Canon X-07, which understands the programming language of my childhood: BASIC! WUHUU!!!

Canon X-07

So I am going to be experimenting with that and sharing some results. I am also teaching two eTextile courses in the coming months and using Adafruits Gemma’s and Flora’s in then so some ATTiny code is following also.
But here is Wittgenstein and vectors with force applied into them. The grey dot should be draggable, not sure if it works in the p5.js environment though.
[p5js code canvas]class Attractor {
float mass;
float G;
PVector location;
boolean dragging = false;
boolean rollover = false;
PVector dragOffset;
Attractor() {
location = new PVector(width/2,height/2);
mass = 20;
G = (second()/30);
dragOffset = new PVector(0.0,0.0);
}

void display() {
ellipseMode(CENTER);
noStroke();
if (dragging) fill (second()*4.25,50);
if (dragging) text(“Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.”,350,mouseY+6);
else if (rollover) fill(240,40,40,200);
else fill(175,200);
ellipse(location.x,location.y,mass*2,mass*2);
}

Again did not have very much time to code and after coding mostly in C for arduino etc. I do find Java & Javascript (the p5.js) to not really fit into my way of thinking. I do still enjoy it and this week I mostly ported the first week’s scipt into vectors. Inspired again (a lot) by Shiffmans Nature of Code-book. It is a recommendable book, if you have some background on programming and Object-oriented programming. Not the most clearly written, but fun. He has done a video tutorials also, which are a joy to watch.

Anyway this weeks code might not work on mobile devices that well, as it does track your mouse position. But who knows if it miraculously detects your touch also… (Did not code that into it, altough p5.js has support for touch controls.) And it’s a one minute loop on the text part. So stick around for the finale..

I have been researching creative coding as a practice in art education for a year now and thinking about much longer. Starting a new year, I realized I have not coded that much during the last year. So I set myself a little challenge -To write a little nifty program every week. – To get myself familiar with the most basic stuff again. These are nothing miraculous or fancy. But something fun for myself. Besides the code, I am exploring the artistic qualities of the code in these little sketches.

Last week I took part in Creative Citizens conference at Royal College of Arts in London. It was two days filled with interesting talks and presentation all based on creative citizenship. Creative Citizens is a research project and has three main themes: hyperlocal publishing, community-led design and creative networks. I think all of the different themes were nicely portrayed, and talks gave a nice variety on different topics. These sort of projects that fuse together different fields from politics, education to art is something I would like to see happen in Finland also. Nevertheless, after the conference I started to think (Well I am a Finn after all…) about digital citizenship portrayed through social media platforms and some particular question came to mind: How much is using social media as an active, critical, citizen just playing with the tools that we are given to play with? Are we just playing in the sandbox of largely censored, monitored products, which turn our messages into money? How much more effective could our criticality be, if we had to say over the platforms? Or even: If we could be part of building them? Jean Burgess, professor at the Queensland University of Technology, gave a very good talk on creative citizenship and social media. She gave the example of silly citizenship (a great name and concept!) as one example to engage critically in social media platforms. Silly citizenship uses social medias own tools to work as a humorous way to engage in politics. One meme she mentioned as an example was a photo of British prime minister David Cameron calling to Barack Obama to have a talk about the situation in Ukraine. The photo was shared through twitter and was quite comical. Internet quickly followed with it own versions of it and so a meme was born. According to Burgess this kind of ”Silly Citizenship” can be one way to engage with the world around us: even though the message is funny and entertaining it still carries a political message.

I do think that this kind of activity is good and to be encouraged. Still, I do ponder on the platform itself*: This kind of activity seems very little one can do. Naturally there are ways to engage more but why are they so difficult? How Is the situation between new media corporations sitting in US and us different to western missionaries going to Africa in the olden days? Bringing with them shiny new things as an exchange for something much more valuable? – Thing is that most of the platforms we use (in western countries) are made by tiny number of US-based young, often white, male engineers. Many platforms still don’t have their revenue plan worked out yet (Twitter anyone?) and hardly any of them have given any thought on the platforms civic engagement, etc. Let alone have any research made on what would be a good platform. And of course why should they? These are startups and corporations looking to make the most money for them and their investors. We are offered free products as an exchange of our information. These products are not designed to be democratic or equal, but entertaining and engaging to use.How will the future look like for us? In 20 years are we, as citizens, being colonized and depleted by algorithms of social media corporation?This is one of the reasons I think we need an understanding of the digital world in a deeper level, we in a way need to be code literate in order to be equal in the digital world. We also would much need an open democratically funded social media platform to succeed. Then I think we could use social media much more effectively.

* I don’t mean the remaining pondering as a critique to Burgess’s talk, rather I found it inspiring and gave me good starting point for my own trail of thoughts to emerge.

FRACTALNOIA

– 11 datasets you cannot believe just happened.

The collection of data is increasing exponentially and it is more and more available to the general public as private databases are opened up. This Big Data holds promises of new insights, unparalleled innovation, even articifical intelligence. However, the ubiquity and availability of data connected to our human desire to see patterns where none exist means that humans have to deal with increasing amounts of meaningless data analysis, “fact-based” conspiracy theories and click-bait infographics. As the data is all digital, it morphs easily into whatever we want, releases itself from the context and appears on fashionable graphs that may look nice, but carry no meaning.

In our installation, we want to show how arbitrary and easy it is to make “data analysis”, deduce causations from correlations and combine different datasets. In addition, we want to give the audience a physical feeling of the datasets, although it is inherently false, to further point out how the context of the dataset can be chosen. The audience gets to manipulate the data by placing everyday physical objects, such as fruit, to a table. The objects present different datasets and graphs are created based these datasets. We thus combine a primitive action of moving common objects to the digital world of information technology and project the resulting graphs for the audience to see. By being able to literally grasp the data and create any type of combination of the datasets, the audience gets to experience both the ease and complexity of drawing meaning from data.

For the last five or so years I have extensively worked with digital media. My art works use digital technologies and I have taught digital technologies. In my day work I use computers for almost everything. I have to say that many things run very smoothly with digital technologies. Pictures, video, programming (naturally) -All this enables me to do-and create- many things.

Steiner starts his journey with the 2010 flash crash in Wall Street, when Dow Jones suddenly lost over trillion dollars of it’s value in one day. Which is by the far the largest single loss ever recorded. Reason for this loss was a bug in one of the automated trading algorithms. Steiner then expands to the history of algorithms and how they took over stock trading and how they are now taking over many other areas, like entertainment industry, medical and health care industry. Steiner’s book is a good introduction on algorithms and their importance in our lives. The book got me thinking about algorithms in culture creation, where they are also already utilized.

Our good fortune allowed us to feel sadness that our parents didn’t have time for and happiness I never saw with them. -The beginners (2011)

Time is our best asset. Where do we invest our time? How do we spend it?
From these timeless questions I came to one practical realisation: (among many other impractical ones) Our(my) need to declutter my digital workspace. My appreciation for simple design, stripped features and beauty comes from the fortune I have had priviledge to use: Time.

Without empty moments, uninterruppted silence, dullness of quiet gray days or just the memory of those moments I might not understand the importance of moment.

Paradoxically, my earlier dream of advanced technology, push notifications, fast internet connection and the ability to connect everywhere, I more and more have the need to disconnect.

I am having exhibition in Galleria Å in Turku until 2.12.2012. It’s about dealing with migraines, or any illness that comes to modify your life in some way. My approach of the subject is dead serious yet overly humorous: What doesn’t kill you makes you make art.

Exhibition is a large installation of paintings and some embedded electronics. Your welcome to visit and I will post photos of it soon (enough).